1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a multilayer structure with an epitaxial group III nitride layer on either a (001) surface of a group IV semiconductor or a surface of the group IV semiconductor which has a misorientation of less than 8 degrees relative to a (001) orientation. The invention further relates to a semiconductor component with such a multilayer structure and to use of a substrate with either a (001) surface of a group IV semiconductor or a surface of the group IV semiconductor which has a misorientation of less than 8 degrees relative to a (001) orientation to produce at least one epitaxial group III nitride layer thereon. Finally, the invention relates to a method of producing a multilayer structure with an epitaxial group III nitride layer and to a method of producing a semiconductor component with such a multilayer structure.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Group III nitride layers on Si(111) surfaces offer a significant cost saving with regard to substrate costs over growth on sapphire and SiC and the possibility of scaling to the diameters conventional in the silicon industry (currently diameters of up to 300 mm), which lowers processing costs further.
This also makes possible, inter alia, integration of III-V semiconductors with silicon technology. For this, however, growth on Si(001) is preferable, this being the standard surface for current Si CMOS technology.
Growth of the hexadic group III nitrides on four-fold Si(001) is difficult, however, due to the unmatched symmetry. It is currently successful only on substrates with a misorientation of above approximately 3°, the material quality being poorer than on Si(111) [Joblot, Schulze1, Schulze2].
The exact cause of the successful growth of monocrystalline GaN on misoriented Si(001) is as yet unknown. It is assumed that there is a possible correlation between the orientation of AlN crystallites and the atomic arrangement of the silicon sub-lattice on the substrate surface [Lebedev]. AlN is often used as the nucleation layer prior to growth of the GaN main layer.
The invention is described below firstly with regard to its method aspect.